Russia-Ukraine war live: EU vows to stand by Kyiv amid reports European and US officials discuss possible peace terms | Ukraine

Ukraine says it has filed criminal charges against Patriarch Kirill, the leader of the Russian Orthodox church, in absentia for “justifying” Russia’s invasion.

Moscow’s most influential spiritual leader, a fervent supporter of president Vladimir Putin, has called the war a historic battle against the “forces of evil”.

The Security Service of Ukraine said it had “collected evidence” against the head of the Russian Orthodox church, Vladimir Gundyaev, in partnership with the prosecutor general’s office.

It said he was “a member of the inner circle of Russia‘s top military and political leadership and … one of the first to publicly support the full-scale war against Ukraine”. It accused Kirill, as he is better known, of “infringing” on Ukraine’s territorial integrity, justifying armed aggression and planning and preparing an “aggressive war”.

It said: “Comprehensive measures are being taken to bring the offender to justice for crimes against our state.”

Ukraine, a predominantly Orthodox country, accelerated its drive to cut ties with all Russian-linked Orthodox institutions after the war began. In October, Ukrainian lawmakers voted to ban the Moscow-linked Ukrainian Orthodox church (UOC), accusing its clergy of collaborating with Russia.

The UK Ministry of Defence has catalogued Russian losses in its attack on Avdiivka.

Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has thanked the US for its latest military aid package, amid concerns that there may now be a time-limit on support.

The defence minister Rustem Umerov, meanwhile, urged the US to provide Ukraine with “more ammo for our warriors.”

The Italian defence minister Guido Crosetto has said the “time not yet ripe” for Ukraine-Russia ceasefire talks.

He told the Quotidiano Nazionale newspaper:

Support for Kyiv from the west and the EU is unchanged. Ukraine is fighting for the protection of its sovereignty, as well as for the observance of international law.

It is obvious that a lasting peace cannot be based on military actions alone. A political ‘ceasefire’ is needed. The time is not yet ripe for that.

The Turkish president, Tayyip Erdoğan, has said he would try to facilitate the parliamentary ratification of Sweden’s Nato membership as far as possible, but added that Stockhom had still not taken sufficient action on Kurdish militants.

Long-neutral Sweden and Finland applied to join Nato last year to bolster their security after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Finland’s membership was sealed in April, but Sweden’s bid had been held up by Turkey and Hungary.

Erdogan submitted a bill approving Sweden’s Nato membership bid to parliament for ratification last month, a move welcomed by the alliance and Stockholm. Turkey had initially raised objections due to what it said was Sweden’s harbouring of groups it deems terrorist.

Speaking to reporters on a return flight from Kazakhstan yesterday, Erdoğan said Stockholm had taken some steps regarding protests organised by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and also concerning arms embargoes on Turkey, but not on the activities of the PKK in Sweden.

“Our duty was to submit this to parliament in the first stage, we did that,” broadcaster Haberturk quoted him today as having told the reporters on his plane. Erdoğan also said planned talks in parliament about Turkey’s 2024 state budget would now take priority, suggesting that the approval of Sweden’s Nato membership might not be rapid.

“But we will try to facilitate the work [on ratifying Sweden’s Nato bid] as much as possible. We will try to show positive efforts as much as we can at this point, so long as our counterparts approach us positively.”

Ukraine’s newly appointed head of the defence industry says he is working tirelessly to ramp up local arms production and wants to turn the country into a weapons production hub for the west.

Oleksandr Kamysyhin, the minister for strategic industries of Ukraine, said that Russia’s invasion of his country and the Israel-Hamas war in the Middle East have highlighted the need for countries to spend on their defence systems.

“We’re really focusing on making Ukraine the arsenal of the free world,” Kamyshin told the Associated Press last night. “We are focused on producing all types of weapons and ammunition, and we show that we can test it on the battlefield and make it better during the war. That’s something we can contribute to the free world, because as you see, defence industry is becoming more and more important globally.”

Kamyshyn said approximately 500 companies in Ukraine’s defence industry are contributing to the country’s efforts to increase weapons production in order to counter Russia’s attempts to seize more territory.

He was appointed to the post around eight months ago, and is now in charge of 300,000 people employed in Ukraine’s defence industry.

He acknowledges that he has had to start scaling the local manufacture of weapons from scratch. Ukraine barely had a local defence industry to speak of before 2022, he said, with the military mainly relying on what it already had and what it received as military aid from allies before the war began with Russia’s invasion in February 2021.

Now, Ukraine is delivering locally produced munition to the battlefield and can increasingly strike inside Russia, he said.

Last year, there were claims that the then British prime minister Boris Johnson had lobbied the Ukrainian president, Vladimir Zelenskiy, against peace.

In a statement, Johnson’s office said at the time:

The Prime Minister updated on his visit to Kyiv last month and shared his conviction that Ukraine would win, supported with the right level of defensive military assistance. He urged against any negotiations with Russia on terms that gave credence to the Kremlin’s false narrative for the invasion, but stressed that this was a decision for the Ukrainian government.

Ukrainska Pravda reported: “According [to] Ukrainska Pravda sources close to Zelenskyy, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Boris Johnson, who appeared in the capital almost without warning, brought two simple messages.

“The first is that Putin is a war criminal, he should be pressured, not negotiated with. And the second is that even if Ukraine is ready to sign some agreements on guarantees with Putin, they are not.”

It came after a former Israeli prime minister rowed back on a suggestion about an alleged agreement to end the war in Ukraine. “It’s unsure there was any deal to be made,” Bennett later said. “At the time I gave it roughly a 50% chance. Americans felt chances were way lower. Hard to tell who was right. It’s not sure such a deal was desirable. At the time I thought so, but only time will tell.”

Writing in Foreign Affairs in August 2022, former US national security official Fiona Hill and foreign policy expert Angela Stent said:

According to multiple former senior U.S. officials we spoke with, in April 2022, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators appeared to have tentatively agreed on the outlines of a negotiated interim settlement: Russia would withdraw to its position on February 23, when it controlled part of the Donbas region and all of Crimea, and in exchange, Ukraine would promise not to seek NATO membership and instead receive security guarantees from a number of countries.

Russian attacks in Ukraine wounded at least 14 civilians over the past day, officials said today.

The governor of the Zaporizhzhia region, Yurii Malashko, said nine people were injured in a Russian rocket strike on the village of Zarichne. Overall, 26 cities and settlements in the region came under attack over the past day, he said.

In the Kherson region, five people were injured, said governor Oleksandr Prokudin. He said attacks in the region came from artillery, mortars, drones, warplanes and tanks.

Nikopol, a city of the opposite bank of the Dnieper River from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, came under fire but no injuries were immediately reported, according to Dnipropetrovsk regional governor, Serhii Lysak.

AFP has just posted a report from near the war-battered town of Bakhmut – which Ukraine is attempting to retake – quoting a Ukrainian soldier with a grim assessment of the conflict.

“I’ve been saying that for some time now already. Step by step we’re losing the war,” the serviceman, who uses the call sign “Mudryi” (Wise), told AFP. “The longer this static war continues, the worse it is for us.”

The frontline between the Ukrainian army and Russian forces occupying the east and south of the country has barely moved since last November, despite repeated Russian strikes and a Ukrainian counteroffensive.

Ukrainian Gen Valery Zaluzhny surprised observers of the invasion this week with an unusually candid assessment that the warring parties had reached a deadlock along the sprawling front. “Just like in the first world war, we have reached the level of technology that puts us into a stalemate,” he told the Economist. “There will most likely be no deep and beautiful breakthrough.”

AFP journalists also found last month that Ukraine was still battling Russian forces in one key village it had claimed to have recaptured weeks earlier.

“We have problems with too many issues. First, the quality of training for our soldiers. Second, we don’t have enough weapons or artillery,” another Ukrainian serviceman near Bakhmut told AFP. “We’re starved for artillery and it’s getting worse.”

Almost $44bn has been spent by the Biden administration on security assistance for Ukraine since it was invaded by Russia in February 2022, according to the Pentagon.

NBC quotes a US official saying there is about $5bn left before the money runs out. A Gallup poll this week suggested 41% of American believe the US is doing too much to help Ukraine, up from 24% just three months ago.

Officials expect Ukraine to want more time on the battlefield – especially with the new equipment it has received. “But there’s a growing sense that it’s too late, and it’s time to do a deal,” a former senior administration official told NBC.

It is also expected that likely Russian attacks on critical infrastructure in Ukraine this winter could again cause serious difficulties for civilians.

Adrienne Watson, spokesperson for the National Security Council, told NBC: “Any decisions about negotiations are up to Ukraine. We are focused on continuing to stand strongly in support of Ukraine as they defend their freedom and independence against Russian aggression.”

It echoed a comment from the Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, who said in August: “It is the Ukrainians, and only the Ukrainians, who can decide when there are conditions in place for negotiations, and who can decide at the negotiating table what is an acceptable solution.”

But the NBC report suggests that the impetus for possible peace talks is coming from the US. Ukraine’s “depleting military forces” are the key concern for the White House, it said. “Manpower is at the top of the administration’s concerns right now,” an official told the network. “If they don’t have competent forces to use [foreign-supplied weaponry] it doesn’t do a lot of good”

Congressional Republicans have also opposed recent attempts to authorise fresh funding for Ukraine. The GOP has a majority in the house of representatives, while the Democrats control the senate.

It is likely that President Volodymyr Zelenskiy would have to drop aspects of his 10-point peace formula that demands Russia retreat entirely from Ukrainian territory, including from Crimea which was annexed in 2014.

Russia currently controls about 17.5% of Ukraine’s internationally recognised territory. NBC report that western officials say president Vladimir Putin believe he can “wait out the west” and keep up the fight in Ukraine until its allies can no longer provide the funding and weapons.

US and European officials discuss possible Ukraine-Russia peace negotiations – report

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Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has appointed a new commander of the country’s special forces, a unit known for conducting military operations in Moscow-held territories, but the officer replaced in the shuffle said he had not been told why.

Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address yesterday that Col Serhiy Lupanchuk would now head the forces and described him as “an experienced officer, combat officer and the right man in command”.

The president said Lupanchuk’s predecessor, Maj-Gen Viktor Horenko, who led the forces from July 2022, “will continue to perform special tasks” within the defence ministry’s intelligence directorate. Zelenskiy gave no further explanation for the change. Horenko said in an interview he had been told nothing. “I personally don’t know the reasons. Let me just say that I learned of this from the media,” Horenko told the Ukrainska Pravda news site.

The special forces are believed to be behind the most sophisticated operations Ukraine’s military has conducted in areas under Russian control, in particular Crimea, annexed by Moscow in 2014, eight years before Moscow’s full land invasion.

Russia intent on capturing Avdiivka coking plant, say Ukraine officials

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